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Why Everyone Hates It: By popular opinion, Vandal Hearts is an ugly little Tactical RPG with so little in the way of character customization that there's no real point in playing it.
Legitimate Issues With the Game: The visual style is rather unorthodox, forgoing the cute anime style for darker colors and character designs that look like something from a French comic book.
Why I Like It Anyway: Despite being one of the earliest Tactical RPGs to see a U.S. release, Vandal Hearts still to this day, has some of the best AI, and hands down the best level design to be found in the genre. Additionally, in a rare move for the genre, it always allowed every character in the party (12 eventually) to take part in every battle, and featured quite possibly the most memorable death animations of any game ever.
Specifically, rather than simply flash and disappear, any time a character is killed (including plot points) they split in half unleashing a hilariously over the top massive geyser of particle effect blood, which is even swept away in the wind in one particularly windy battle. Assuming of course that this made sense. Killing a rock golem for instance would instead cause a completely over the top explosion of small pebbles. Clearly, it is an effect the designers were very taken with, and it received an amount of loving attention that was completely uncalled for. On the other hand, it injects some much appreciated humor into what might otherwise be a surprisingly bleak game.
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What we're here to discuss however is the level design. While the TRPG genre as a whole will routinely begin each battle by listing the victory and loss conditions, rarely if ever do they deviate from "Kill all enemies" and "Main character must survive." When they do, the best you can usually hope for is "Kill the boss" or "Main character and this NPC must survive." Vandal Hearts mixes things up a lot. One mission pits you against an army of possessed villagers, requiring you to destroy the evil statues causing their condition while minimizing how many you kill with automatic counter attacks. Another requires you to hold out for several turns against constant waves of new enemies, protecting a number of magic towers from harm. One requires you to slaughter fleeing guard dogs before they can alert their masters. Another to set up an ambush along a road, wiping out a large force before any can escape off the edges of the map.
Even those battles which don't play with the victory and loss conditions generally bring something interesting to the table. Shoving large crates around to block off narrow choke points, shoving boulders down hills to deal major damage from a distance, and dynamically changing battlefields, like a train whose rear-most car detaches every two rounds, forcing a constant desperate advance. This is all coupled with an enemy AI that plays things surprisingly smart, making these special actions incredibly important if you want to do well.
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Beyond the wonderful creativity in the meat of the game, Vandal Hearts is actually quite a by the numbers game. After reaching a certain levels, characters can upgrade their class along one of two paths per character. Melee types focusing on either offense or defense, mages and healers either remaining specialized, or becoming more of a jack of all trades, and archers either increasing the range of their attacks or making the radical switch to an extremely speedy short range class, with mechanical wings. Battles are broken up with the chance to head to a simple menu driven town to shop, and the game's plot, while fairly well told, is the same sort of corrupt nobility and secretly evil church affair the genre seems to love.
There is an interesting wrinkle however in the game's long running optional sidequest. Fulfilling certain requirements over the course of the game unlocks a series of optional, extra difficult battles. Successfully completing all of these unlocks the ability to promote the main character to a new special class near the end of the game, which eventually unlocks a second ending. This much is not remarkable on its own, but the special class in question is quite memorable for allowing the main character to cast any spell in the game. Including special spells only normally cast by certain enemies, and the ability to invoke the effect of any item in the game as a spell with no MP cost. The practical upshot of all this is that your reward for completing these optional challenges is to effectively spend the last few battles of the game with a debug mode enabled.
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While it never really reached a significant level of public awareness, Vandal Hearts did eventually spawn a sequel, but unfortunately it failed to maintain any of its predecessor's charm. In addition to ditching the visual style, creative level design, and simple class system of the original, Vandal Hearts II decided to employ a conceptually interesting gimmick without taking the time to make it work. Rather than each side taking turns moving all their units each round, an enemy always acts simultaneously with the player moving one of their characters. While this could have been interesting, in practice, one simply selects the character an enemy will obviously attempt to attack from the rear for maximum damage, have them back up two spaces, and attack the air behind them. On confirming this, sure enough, a monster will make its way to what appeared to be an ideal position, attack what is now empty space, and take a strong hit from its intended target. Not only does this make a distinct lack of sense, it also makes for an insultingly easy game, best avoided entirely.
The original Vandal Hearts meanwhile is really a woefully under-appreciated gem of a game. It has a level of cleverness that puts the rest of its genre to shame, a unique aesthetic, and a nice mix of humor between the over the top death animations and a tight character limit in an early game shop condensing "Padded Leather Armor" to the odd mental image inducing "PLeather Armor." Definitely a game worth playing for those who can track it down.
